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How could your event registration process be better?

April 5, 2018

The delegate experience starts right from the registration process, which is a critical phase of corporate event organisation. If you get it right, you can foster excitement and engagement right from the get-go. Get it wrong, and you risk under-delivering and not meeting ROI expectations.

The cievents team is here to help you improve your business event registration process so you can deliver an incredible experience for your delegates. Success comes down to ensuring that registration is viewed as one part of the overarching attendee experience. There are many registration tools out there that provide software solutions, but it's only by using a strategic events management agency that you'll ensure your attendees are fully immersed in the event well before it has even begun.

How can you optimize your corporate event registration process?

The key to a successful event registration process is ensuring it's part of a larger strategic vision.

Get inside the mind of your delegates

In order to create a registration process that gets you the numbers you need and the engagement you want, you need to take a step back and think about who the event is for. Are you running a brand or product launch for franchise owners and re-sellers, or a celebration event for your employees? Step into the shoes of the people who will be attending: How much time do they have on their hands? What do they want to get out of the event? What will truly excite and delight them? What expectations do they have from having attended past events?

The cievents team uses questions like these to set up the registration process in such a way that it draws delegates in. If your business is targeting employees who are required to attend the event, we work with you to make them feel like the event isn't just something they have to go to, but something they want to go to - and better yet, are excited about going to!

If you're targeting your distributors or franchise owners, work needs to be put into encouraging them to register. A strategic events management agency like cievents can help you develop a registration process that fosters hype and excitement about the event so they want to sign up.

An effective corporate event registration process knows its delegates inside and out, and draws them in with engaging content.

Make the experience seamless

The event registration process needs to be clear and straightforward. If it's difficult to navigate your website sign-up page or the branding isn't spot on, people aren't going to be excited to attend. Their first experience of the event is going to be one of irritation.

Here are some steps the cievents team takes to ensure the registration process is as smooth and seamless as possible for prospective delegates:

Integrating registration with your website: Registration should be fully integrated into your company website. People shouldn't need to navigate to multiple pages to register for your event. By hosting the registration form on a single webpage and having all the information they'll need right there for them to see, the process is made much easier.

Responsiveness: There's no excuse these days for not having a responsive registration form that displays beautifully across all devices. Whether your attendees are registering on their smartphones, laptops or tablets, the experience should be the same: simple.

Consistent branding: It should be obvious that the event is associated with your business from the branding on the registration page. This means using the same fonts, coloring and logo as your company website instead of a different site with different formatting.

Keep it simple: It's easy to go overboard and try to wow people with a lot of information. However, simplicity is key. Too much information and you risk potential attendees losing interest as they simply don't have time to read through it all. Limiting the information on the registration page to only the necessary details helps with this. cievents' GDPR taskforce will ensure you also comply with the GDPR rules here.

Live chat feature: Including a live chat feature on registration pages means people can ask questions while going through the registration process. You'll need to ensure someone is monitoring it during working hours and set up automatic replies outside these hours to ensure you're providing timely responses.

Engage and excite

If you're wondering why not many people are registering for your event, it might be because they're not excited about it. Engagement doesn't begin when the event starts - you can engage and excite delegates right from the very beginning. Here are some ways to do this:

The registration process is an opportunity to engage and excite your delegates right from the get-go.

Video marketing: Video is an incredibly engaging medium, and there's an increasing number of ways you can utilize it. Liven up your registration page with a video from last year's event, showcasing the excitement and atmosphere. Consider emailing your delegates with behind-the-scenes video updates in the lead-up to the event, and sharing real-time footage with Facebook Live, Instagram Stories or Snapchat.

Social media: Create a hashtag for your event and encourage attendees to use it. You can post images of your team preparing for the event, and publish engaging content with visual CTAs linking to the event registration page. Publish blogs with interviews with your guest speakers or advice on things to do in the city your event is being held. Engage in conversations with attendees and host chat sessions on Twitter where they're encouraged to ask you questions. Social media is a great way to connect on a more personal level with your attendees, so they don't see the event as just a big corporate shindig, but a place where they'll meet and connect with real people with similar interests.

Create an event hashtag for social media and utilise video functionality to immerse delegates in the event experience before it's even begun.

Email marketing: Once your delegates have registered for the event, you should absolutely continue to share details and updates with them. You can announce guest speakers gradually over time, first sending out a teaser with some trivia about the speaker to encourage people to guess who it'll be, before making the actual announcement. You can include useful resources and digital copies of the agenda via email as well. Set up segmented drip EDM campaigns for those who have registered and need to receive additional information, as well as for those who have visited the registration page but haven't yet registered, to encourage them to do so.

Use Google Analytics

Collecting data is essential for optimizing your event registration process, which is why installing Google Analytics on your registration webpage is so important. This will allow you to monitor activity on the page, and you can use these insights to re-target people who visited, but didn't complete registration.

If maximizing the number of registrations is a key goal for you, knowing whether people are registering - and determining the reasons why they may not be - is critical so you can address any issues as they arise.

Utilize technology

Traditionally, the registration process culminated in standing in line at a registration desk prior to the event. But technology now enables us to bypass the long queues and unnecessary paper forms. Using wearables instead of sign-up sheets means your delegates can simply tap on to indicate their arrival.

The cievents team has a lot of experience incorporating technology into our events, as we're always at the cutting edge of innovations designed to improve the event experience.

Reach out to a strategic events management agency

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It's no surprise that in a highly connected world, we still choose to connect face-to-face. https://t.co/VhtnVp2MXE

As you can see, there's a whole lot more to registration than a simple sign-up form. It's part of an overarching strategy that should be aligned with your entire event's objectives, designed to maximize ROI and stimulate excitement to create an engaging delegate journey from start to finish. This is why it's so important to engage a strategic events management agency when organizing your event. Not only can they help you set up your registration process, they'll ensure it's aligned with your goals and designed with your attendees in mind.

cievents are experts at creating winning registration processes that are uniquely tailored to your goals and the attendees you are targeting. Reach out to us today.